I don't think this leads the way to facism. Certainly, you have rules
for emergencies when large parts of the executive or legislative are
killed or become unavailable in some other way. I think talking about
a terrorist act on Election Day is stupid because it might give some
people ideas (kind of a self-fulfilling prophecy). However, I suppose
the Bush camarilla just wants to keep a general climate of fear
because fearful people are more likely to vote conservative. From
this point of view, it's important to talk about terrorist acts twice
a week or so.

It wouldn't hurt for an election to be delayed say, a week, because of
an attack. That's not fascism, that's prudence. Postponing elections
_indefinitely_ is fascism. While Madrid is one issue, what about an
attack ON election day that prevented people from voting?

What if a large scale power outage in California completely unrelated
to a terrorist attack prevented everyone in LA and the Bay Area from
voting, because the new-fangled voting machines didn't work? With 95
electoral votes, that's 20% of the whole... It would make sense to have
a "do-over" in that case, even though California will probably go to
Kerry.

Its worth pointing out that they're responding to something that has
already happened: The primary elections in New York were delayed
because of Sep. 11. So the administration isn't necessarily fishing for
fascism, they're responding to something that already happened.

Note that Congress has the power to change the election laws at any
moment, and it would take Congress to do so. The constitution doesn't
say _how_ elections should be conducted, merely that they be conducted,
and that Congress gets to decide how that should happen. It would be
perfectly reasonable for Congress to allow the DHS to delay an election
a week without involving congress, if "substantial numbers of voters
were unable to vote".